Exam 5: Social Cognition

The state of having too much information to make a decision or remain informed about a topic is known as ____________________.

There are a number of heuristics, errors, and biases upon which people routinely rely that suggest that they are not naturally skilled at making estimates of statistical probabilities. Identify and discuss at least three of these.

The so-called illusory correlation can most directly help explain ____.

People who think they have a "hot hand" after winning five poker hands in a row tend to think that ____.

Hilda is on a low carbohydrate diet, which restricts her from eating foods such as white bread, potato chips, and pretzels. The more Hilda thinks about the fact that she cannot eat such foods, however, the more desperately she begins to crave them. Social psychologists refer to this kind of pattern as a(n) ______________________.

You and a friend are visiting a new city and would like to splurge and go out for a fine meal. You look at the restaurant listings in the newspaper and find one that is very expensive. Your friend says: "Let's go for it. With prices like that, we're bound to have a delicious meal!" In making this statement, your friend was most likely guided by the ____.

Jason is buying a new iPhone this semester, as are most of his friends. According to Malle's work on attribution, what will Jason most likely think when he sees his friends buying an iPhone?

Three-year-old children tend to think that the Stroop test is really easy, as compared to six-year-old children, 12-year-old children, or adults. This is because, in general, three-year-olds ____.

You have just spent the afternoon volunteering in the post-anesthesia recovery unit at the local hospital, helping patients with a variety of ailments. Even though you are not actually ill, as you walk home from the hospital you do so with a slight limp, and begin coughing lightly. What phenomenon is most likely to be responsible for this?

Which of the following is an explanation for the false consensus effect, but not an explanation for the false uniqueness effect?

Jorge just received an A+ on a physics exam. If you make an external attribution for this event, what might you thinking?

People generally prefer to conserve effort by relying on automatic modes of thought (rather than conscious modes of thought) whenever they can. That is, people tend to ____.

Compared to deliberate thinking, automatic thinking involves a greater level of ____.

The term ____________________ was coined to refer to people's general unwillingness to do much extra conscious thinking (i.e., people's mental "laziness").

Quite understandably, students are often more upset about missing an exam question when they had previously circled the correct answer-and then changed it to an incorrect answer-as opposed to when they had chosen an incorrect answer all along. This is most directly related to the ____.

Research on the anchoring and adjustment heuristic indicates that ____.

When people want to suppress a thought, the automatic mind works to ____.

The false consensus effect, the illusory correlation, and the first instinct fallacy are all examples of topics in ____ research.

What will people most likely do when they encounter information that is at odds with an existing schema?

Research indicates that ____ engage in counterfactual thinking; and that ____ engage in meta-cognition.